ESA voucher program helps Arizona students, families

Sept. 17

Lindsay Bergemann noticed her two children struggled as they attended a public school in Colorado.

Bergemann worked in a different department for the school district and had the opportunity to volunteer at the school. She noticed her son was just sitting in class after quickly finishing his math assignments.

“The teacher was like, ‘I can give him more worksheets, right?’ But there’s only so many more worksheets that you can really do to advance,” Bergemann said.

“He did qualify for their gifted program, but it was one day a week for one hour. It just wasn’t really pushing him, and I could see him getting bored. And he wasn’t really learning how to work hard, and I worried about it because things came easier to him,” she said.

She also noticed that her daughter seemed to struggle with reading after completing first grade. Bergemann talked about her concerns with the school.

“‘I don’t know what it is, but she’s skipping words, or she’s doing this and or turning them around. What’s going on?’ And they’re like, ‘It’s normal, it’s normal, it’s normal.’ And I was like, ‘It just doesn’t feel normal,” she said.

Bergemann was originally from Arizona and decided to move back with her family. She began researching different schools her children could attend. At the time, they were a one-income household.

Private school wasn’t something her family could afford, but thanks to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, it was an option for her children.

How did the ESA program help Bergemann and her children?

The ESA program allows families who don’t send their kids to public school to apply for and receive state funds to cover education expenses regardless of how much income they make. Parents can use the funds to cover the cost of private school or the cost of homeschool.

In 2022, Arizona legislators approved an expansion of the universal voucher program and supporters of the bill said it gave parents the freedom to choose how to educate their children.

However, critics of the program feel it is siphoning much needed funds away from public education, while hurting students who already come from marginalized communities.

But parents like Bergemann feel their children can sometimes fall through the cracks in the public education system.

When she was in kindergarten, Bergemann had attended a private school in Chandler called New Vistas Center for Education. She was excited to learn one of the founders of the school, Carol Eilas, was still there.

Elias was a former public school teacher. In Eilas’s experience, there was a lot of bureaucracy around teaching students in a public school setting. More than 45 years ago, Elias decided to open a private school so she could offer education in a way students could thrive.

How the ESA voucher program made a difference for a private school in Chandler

New Vistas Center for Education tests every child who enrolls into their school to help gauge where they are at academically. New Vistas tests each student in order to build a curriculum around the academic needs of each child.

“Testing here is for us to know so that, on the first day of school, teachers know a little bit about their children in the classroom. They know who’s ready for this, who’s ready for that. And without that information, the teachers are wasting kids’ time,” Elias said.

“They’re wasting their time trying to figure out (what) to teach them, things that maybe they already know. Or maybe that child might never be ready for that right now in your classroom, ” she added.

New Vistas provides teachers with co-teachers and aides for each classroom. The majority of the teaching staff come from a public school background, and the teachers who work at New Vistas stay long-term, according to Elias.

Kristi Roher is the co-director of New Vistas, along with Elias. Roher is involved in testing student academic levels throughout the school year. She frequently sees students struggling with test anxiety since public schools place a lot of emphasis on test scores.

Elias and Roher instruct their teaching staff to tell students a test is just a snapshot in time of where they are at currently, unlike public schools that use standardized testing to categorize students.

“It is not like, ‘Well, that’s your final evaluation of who you are as a learner.’ There’s nothing like that. (We) never compare. Ever,” Roher said.

“It’s not important to know who is at the top of a class because your Everest is your Everest,” she added.

Students like Bergemann’s children are tested before they start at New Vistas. The testing confirmed her daughter was below reading level, which was something that was never addressed at her former public schools.

“They (New Vistas) put her through an entire phonics program because she wasn’t getting phonics, and she caught up. My son is actually very challenged. There’s not a time that he’s sitting there not doing anything,” Bergmann said.

Her children are in their third school year at New Vistas, and she said her children are thriving.

Without the ESA program, Bergemann believes her children would have been left behind.

“And doing what’s right for your kids, and I think that there’s a lot of good programs out there, but my kids were not getting their needs met, in the options that I had,” she said.

^{Photo courtesy of Lindsay Bergemann.}

Reporting by “Arizona Horizon” Education Solutions Reporter Roxanne De La Rosa. Her role is made possible through grant funding from the Arizona Local News Foundation’s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund and Report for America.